No Illusions: The Voices of Russia's Future Leaders

Ellen Mickiewicz

Abstract

What will the next generation of Russian leaders be like? How will they regard the United States, Russia’s place in the world, democracy, free speech, and immigration? What do they think of their current leaders? What sorts of tactics will they bring to international negotiating tables, political and otherwise? This book provides an engaging, intimate, and unprecedented window onto the mindsets of the next generation of leaders in Russian politics, business, and economics in their own words, candidly expressed in focus groups led by a Russian professional. It is a unique opportunity to experie ... More

What will the next generation of Russian leaders be like? How will they regard the United States, Russia’s place in the world, democracy, free speech, and immigration? What do they think of their current leaders? What sorts of tactics will they bring to international negotiating tables, political and otherwise? This book provides an engaging, intimate, and unprecedented window onto the mindsets of the next generation of leaders in Russian politics, business, and economics in their own words, candidly expressed in focus groups led by a Russian professional. It is a unique opportunity to experience the future leaders’ candor, disappointments, models for the future, and the state of the world. They are students in Russia’s three most elite universities, the training grounds for all of the nation’s leadership. Allowing these students to speak in their own words, it shares their thoughts on international relations, the domestic and international media, democratic movements, and their government. It also shows how their total immersion in the world of the internet—an immersion that sets them apart from the current generation of Russian leadership and much of the rest of the country—frames the way that they think and affects their trust in their leaders, the media, and their colleagues. The book also looks at the nation’s recent protests and nascent political movements to show how they came about and to consider what promise, if any, they might hold for a more democratic Russia.

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